Chapter Two: We Stay

My wife swears that our next-door neighbor is Superman. A Cornish, octogenarian Superman.

As my wife and I began to pull the first round of luggage out of our car, we were welcomed by an elderly gentleman with cap, coat, cane and cocker spaniel, who marched briskly up the road towards us through some magic portal, right out of the nineteenth century. I wanted to paint him immediately. Having lived on the farm since he was a boy, he authoritatively answered any questions we had, and then told us about his eight mile walk to Penzance and back the night before. Can you imagine? A brief comparison. My father: 85, New Yorker, nursing home, barely mobile, barely talks. SuperCornishman: 83, cuts down trees with handsaw and hauls them uphill in wheelbarrow with flat tire, while singing heart out. Is there something in the air here?

He lives in the 1,200 year-old thatched cottage adjoining ours, so we see (and hear) him often. Two days ago, we caught sight of him standing atop a tall ladder with an electric trimmer, decapitating the eight-foot hedges alongside our cottage, yodeling beautifully at the top of his lungs.

The upshot of this is, of course, that to my wife who adores him, I look lazy and unproductive in comparison. And, of course, not having any work at present just makes me look even worse. To appease her, I applied for work at a fried chicken restaurant. During the job interview, I foolishly attempted to educate the manager about the differing English and American notions of what a “biscuit” is (in the US biscuits are lovely, huge, buttery affairs, always served with fried chicken) and wondered why his restaurant did not serve them.  Needless to say, I was not hired.

That same first day, as my wife and I were puttering around the cottage, three rays of light materialized in the form of two young teen-aged girls, and a teensy four year-old mite of a girl, who knocked on the door of our conservatory and let themselves in.  Two of these sprites were the nieces of our landlady; the oldest was her daughter, and she had come by proxy with her two cousins to welcome us to the cottage which, after her whole life living there, she had just vacated. 

So there my wife and I stood, two forty-something adults speaking with a sweet Cornish welcoming committee of three girls who had all the information and wisdom about our new cottage, the farm we were on, and the rest of Penzance, of any seasoned, local curmudgeon. We were totally charmed. So was our four-year old daughter, who, when she finally met the littlest elf-maiden, shrieked excitedly, grabbed her little hand and ran off playing with her.  The older girls have told our daughter: “We love your cool American accent!” (On that note, we have noticed after some days of playing with them that our little girl has distinctly changed the way she pronounces certain words.  As an example, she has replaced her big, round American “no” with a much more delicate, English-sounding “neh-oo.”)

Our landlady made her appearance after this to meet us and offer herself to us if needed.  She and my wife gabbed for ages about the Aga in the kitchen.  I pretty much just as well might not have been there.  By the way, Americans have no clue what an Aga is. We have never heard of them.  My first question was: “what is an ogger?”  After my wife corrected me, my second was: “what do the A, G, and A in AGA stand for?”  And after combing the four or five Aga cookbooks that our landlady left us, I still don’t know.  It would not surprise me if the authors of those books do not know either.

Our kitchen has a gloriously high ceiling, skylights, and lots of counter space.  We have plenty of doors to the outside with ancient looking keys and brass door handles. We have lots of snails ( I’ve never seen so many!) and slugs, and spiders.  Spiders are everywhere, in fact.  I’m a bit irritated by this because my wife assured me that there are fewer insects in England than in the US.  In the US we have biting, stinging, sucking insects in spades.  But, she tells me, it’s because of all the spiders that there are so few of the other pesky insects. 

A bit more about our cottage. One-hundred years old, slate roof, thick stone walls, which means lots of recessed windows and window seats.  It also means very low, beamed ceilings on the first floor.  I still worry about cranial damage when walking through doorways. I also nearly brained my poor infant boy when I gave him a good toss upwards the other day.  These low ceilings would make sense to me if, by and large, the English were a short people.  But they are not.  No one has this kind of ceiling in America, at least not for real.  A friend of mine had similar beams running across his ceiling, although slightly higher, and when I touched them (I could not resist!), I found they were styrofoam.  

So we have stayed.  We have been properly welcomed.  My little girl has a playmate. She will begin school shortly and find many more.  My landlady’s daughter will babysit for us, and probably pose for a painting for me.  Our cat is happy and our home is beautiful.  We are still living out of suitcases, and will be for a fortnight.  And we still have no work.

To be continued.

Copyright 2012, Cameron Bennett